With training camps still a few weeks away and the FIBA World Cup completed, this is the deadest time of the basketball year. What better time than now to start arguments about who’s better and who’s best by creating some NBA Player Rankings? Rankings in a vacuum are highly problematic simply because so much of a player’s value is tied up in context: how well does he mesh with his teammates? What’s his contract situation? Is he being asked to do too much or held back by others taking too large a role?
Still, tis the season, and creating a rough order of players isn’t the worst way to start to crystallize thoughts about the league in general and how specific teams might perform for the coming season. With that in mind, here’s one man’s opinions about the 25 best players for the coming year. This isn’t intended to be a prediction of All-Star worthiness or MVP voting as those things tend to overrate offense while being more beholden to position requirements than a straight ranking. There are nine point guards in my top 25, with another few just missing the cut.
Speaking of missing the cut, you’ll notice there’s a whole category of players not listed, and that’s guys with serious lingering injury concerns. Paul George will likely miss most of the season, so that’s an easy omission, but guys like Derrick Rose, Kobe Bryant, Brook Lopez, Al Horford and Rajon Rondo all working their way back to some degree from devastating injuries aren’t on the list either. At this point, there’s simply no way of knowing how these guys will perform versus NBA competition. Rose’s World Cup was less than stellar, but was that simply two years of rust or an actual loss in a degree of explosive ability?
Also absent for the most part are role players. No matter how deadly a shooter a Kyle Korver or dominant a rim protector a Roy Hibbert can be, those are guys you “finish” a team with. While many a role player can have as much if not a more positive impact than the team’s star, that impact would swiftly become negative if these players were asked to step up to the number 1 or 2 slot for a team. It’s not so much these players don’t make this list, t’s that they belong on a list of their own.
In terms of “healthy scratches” to borrow a March Madness term, the first five out were Kyrie Irving, Paul Millsap, Al Jefferson, Joe Johnson and Kahwi Leonard, which is a pretty darn solid starting 5 in its own right. If someone wanted to argue any of them should make the list anywhere from about 18 on down, that’s valid and aside from some rough tiers many players are close enough, you could rank them any number of ways and be in the ballpark.
So without further ado…
Point Guard Pileup
By a good margin, the deepest position in the league, spots 25-21 are all high-end point guards. Night after night, the most consistently excellent match-up on the floor is between the point guards as twenty teams, give or take, are solid or better in this slot. These guys are among the best:
25. Kyle Lowry – Somewhat unheralded due to some early career chemistry issues and the fact that his best years have come in relative obscurity in Toronto, Lowry is an absolute bulldog. Though teammate DeMar DeRozan wa the Raptor selected to the Eastern Conference All-Star roster last year, Lowry was more deserving of the honor as his scoring, playmaking, defense and, above all else, toughness carried Toronto to the third seed in the East. Now, re-signed to an extremely reasonable contract long-term contract, Lowry can focus on securing both the individual (All-Star) and team (playoff success) plaudits which have eluded him thus far.
24. Damian Lillard – Perhaps a touch overrated by the general public who focus on his clutch shotmaking while ignoring his (very real) defensive shortcomings, Lillard is still among the tougher covers in the league. With his capability of shooting from seemingly anywhere combined with the ability to explode to the basket off the dribble, Lillard was one of the keys to the Portland offense which was not only one of the best, but one of the most entertaining in the league. Lillard also has a clear path towards improving on his rookie and sophomore performances. His main weaknesses has been substandard finishing at the rim. In year two, he already showed an improvement in his ability to draw fouls on drives, he just needs to convert a slightly higher percentage when no foul is given.
23. Goran Dragic – Dragic might deserve to be a little bit higher, but last year’s performance has many of the hallmarks of a career year. If he can repeat, he might be worthy of a spot five or ten places higher on this list. He fully deserved his 3rd team All-NBA and Most Improved Player award last season as he was the heartbeat of the Suns being the biggest surprise in the league. Coming of a strong showing in the World Cup, Dragic will be without one of his favored accomplices last year with Channing Frye signing in Orlando. The duo was one of the most deadly pick-and-roll (really, pick-and-pop) combos in the NBA, and it’s unlikely Dragic will develop that same chemistry with either Markieff Morris or Anthony Tolliver.
22. Mike Conley – One of the more consistently underrated performers in the league for years, Conley never seems to get mentioned in discussions of All-Star teams or Team USA selections or the like. Still, a fantastic two-way player great at both protecting the ball and collecting steals on the defensive end, Conley deserves better. Certainly, his quiet demeanor and that he flies under the radar for the Grizzlies doesn’t help his cause nor does the fact that his contributions are on the defensive end more than most top point guards. But on this list of “best” not “most popular,” he finally gets his due.
21. Tony Parker – “Spurs not named Tim Duncan” have always been among the most difficult players to accurately assess. Gregg Popovich is a demonstrated master of putting players in positions to succeed and not using them in any other way. That said, the Spurs re-emergence as genuine title contenders over the past few seasons has coincided with Pop putting the ball in Parker’s hands more, transitioning from an offense relying on heavy doses of Duncan post ups to a system of whirling motion and seemingly endless pick-and-rolls coming from all angles of the floor. The key to that system is Parker. The Frenchman has a unique knack for finishing in traffic despite playing below the rim. When combined with his just-good-enough pull-up jumper and his ability to make the correct pass if the defense rotates to him, Parker becomes almost impossible to keep out of the lane. If the Spurs weren’t such a deep team or Pop believed in extending his starters’ minutes, Parker might be even higher on this list – he averaged under 30 minutes per game in 2013-14 resulting in less impressive top-line numbers than he might otherwise have had. His per/36 stats of 20 and 7 tell the full story.
We Three Bigs
Not everyone on the list is huge scorer. Some of the very best players in the game can score when called upon but affect the game equally with energy, defense and passing. The following three big men exemplify these alternative ways to helping a team besides just putting the ball in the basket.
19. Joakim Noah – Last year’s Defensive Player of the Year, might actually be a touch overrated on that end, but only a touch. His runaway victory for the award was aided by the Pacers’ collapse throwing shade on Roy Hibbert and his own offensive brilliance despite not being much of a scorer. Noah’s is an unusually good passer for a big man and can handle the ball out on the floor a little as well. With the possibly reinvigorated Pau Gasol in Chicago and Derrick Rose returning to something like full health, Noah can resume his more accustomed role of offensive garbage man, defensive linchpin and all-around energetic maniac.
20. Marc Gasol – Much like Memphis teammate Conley, Gasol never seems to get his due. Part of it is that a player of his bulk and relative lack of agility isn’t thought of as “subtle.” But the younger Gasol’s talents are just that. A master of defensive angles, the best passing big man in the game (operating as something of a point-center from the elbow at times) and a clever scorer when needed, the Grizzlies had the winning percentage of a 56 win team in the 59 games Gasol played last season.
18. Serge Ibaka – Probably the closest thing to a “role player” on the entire list, Ibaka’s combination of offensive and defensive abilities is almost wholly unique in the league. In almost any lineup, he will be filling a secondary role for a team, but his combination of rim protection, quickness and ability to space the floor on offense allows him to have a role in just about any lineup. As an illustration, imagine almost any “limited” big man (Jefferson, Hibbert, Nikola Pekovic, Kevin Love, LeMarcus Aldridge and so on) in the league and consider who his ideal partner would be. For almost all of them, the answer is Serge Ibaka.
Controversial and Divisive
Some players just bring out the debate-club in people. Should this guy play better defense? Should that guy pass more? Is he getting the most out of his talents? He’s a terrible teammate! Few players engender quite the degree of “Hot Take Theater” of the next four players on the list:
17. John Wall – If I had to pick one guy on this list most likely to make a big jump, it’s Wall. The #1 overall pick of the 2010 Draft has finally started to deliver on his vast promise. In his fourth season, Wall added a passable three-point shot, making 35% from deep while taking over 100 more threes than he had in his first three seasons combined. He has lost none of his electric speed, which was a big part of why he was the most proficient player in the league at getting his teammates open corner three looks, an immensely valuable skill in today’s game. The next big jump will be if he can just stop shooting those damned two-point jumpers early in the shot clock.
16. James Harden – Look, he’s every bit the terrible defender that people say he is. Even on Team USA duty, the bizarre lapses in effort an concentration plagued him during the World Cup. However, the degree of scrutiny he’s received for his defense has obscured to a great degree his offensive brilliance. His style isn’t always pretty, what with the reliance of looking to draw contact and free throw attempts more than making baskets, but Harden is one of the more dynamic
15. Russell Westbrook – Let Russ be Russ. The Thunder need him to do everything, and he does it, even if it’s not always in the most armchair coach-approved manner. By the far the player most likely to start an ugly argument when his name comes up, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind about him one way or the other.
14. DeMarcus Cousins – Throughout his NBA career, Cousins has cut something of a tragic figure. Beset by poor ownership and management over his first several years in Sacramento, things were finally looking up last year as the Cousins/Isaiah Thomas/Rudy Gay triumvirate played .500 ball when all three were healthy. So of course the Kings decided to replace Thomas with the vastly inferior Darren Collison. More bad times ahead. At the same time, Cousins’ image got a nice polish with his involvement in Team USA”s gold medal-winning World Cup, as questions of his “attitude” started to fade. That “attitude” has always been the product of a intense competitor stuck in losing situations. Unfortunately, again through no fault of his own, Sacto is right back to square one. Expect to see a LOT of Angry Boogie this season, but he’ll be putting up mammoth numbers as he rages.
Powering Forward
With power forward the second deepest position in the NBA behind point guard, it’s unsurprising that a number of fours appear on the list, and do so ranking highly. These three get it done in vastly different ways, but still get it done.
13. LaMarcus Aldridge – Perhaps the best example in the NBA today of how a player’s individual stats don’t tell the whole story. Aldridge is the fulcrum around which the Portland offense whirs. His value can also be seen in the drop in many of the Blazer’s role players shooting when Aldridge is off the floor. Over the course of the regular season, Aldridge’s odd, mid-range heavy style is increasingly confusing to modern defenses, geared towards preventing threes and layups. A player like Aldridge who can score with aplomb from that in-between zone creates all sorts of unusual rotations which make not only Aldridge himself, but the other Portland players difficult to locate and cover. This combined with his ability to run the floor, rebound and defend both inside and out make him one of the league’s best.
12. Blake Griffin – Does his media profile outstrip his on-court ability? Since he’s probably the second or third most-visible player in the league after LeBron and KD, probably. Doesn’t change the fact that he’s really, really good. Last year he took a giant leap forward, as an injury to Chris Paul allowed him to assume temporary alpha-dog status over the Clippers. He passed this test with flying colors, not only increasing his scoring but ball-handling and playmaking duties with Paul sidelined. Still not a great shooter, either from the perimeter or the free throw line, adding to this aspect of his game might be enough to put him into the top 10 going forward, as might a more consistent impact on defense.
11. Dirk Nowitzki – Look up “aging gracefully” and there won’t be a picture of Dirk’s blond curls alongside the definition, but maybe there should be. Joking aside, even at age 35, Dirk spit hot fire from everywhere on the floor. He might no longer be quite the terror he once was against the very best and most athletic defenders, but Dirk remains a singular talent in terms of the way he forces defenses to account for him on every second of every possession. Never the greatest athlete, Dirk has enough nous and experience to remain a passable defender well into his twilight years. This coming season looks to be about his last shot of winning a second title as Nowitzki agreeing to a massively sub-market contract extension allowed the Mavs to add talent around him such as Tyson Chandler and Chandler Parsons.
Gunners
Chuckers. Conscience free. Proving the hot hand theory is true. These two guys are among the players for whom #LeaguePassAlert was invented. Steph is heating up! Melo as 37 midway through the 3rd quarter! Any night can be that night for these two.
10. Carmelo Anthony – Lost in the dumpster fire of the 2013-14 Knicks season was Anthony having perhaps his best year as a pro. Still one of the most difficult covers in the NBA one-on-one with the strength to bully wings and the quickness to blow by power forwards, Melo deserves better than to play out the last few years of his prime for a team still paying for everyone of its managerial missteps. He led the NBA in minutes per game in 2013-14 while carrying the third highest usage in the league, finishing second to Kevin Durant in the scoring race. And he was efficient in getting those points, posting a well above average .561 True Shooting Percentage including a career high 40.2% accuracy from three-point range. The Knicks might still not be in great shape, but look elsewhere as to why.
9. Stephen Curry – No player in the league is quite so terrifying with the ball at any point over half-court as Curry. If he ONLY took pull-up three pointers, the 39.5% he put up on those shots in 2013-14 would put him just outside the top 20 in the NBA. And those are on “bad” shots off the dribble. Overall he shot 42.4%, good for 8th in league, leading the NBA in both total threes taken and made for the second consecutive year. Even if run off the three point line, Curry is a great shooter from mid-range as well. Double team him and he makes the right pass, as shown by his career high 8.5 assists per game last season. Really, the only knocks against him are his defense (underwhelming, though less fatal to a point guard than to a big man) and his size which can occasionally see him get muscled out of games. He’s only a year or another injury to Chris Paul from being the best point guard in the game.
The Inevitable Comparison
One is a player who’s “max-worthy” numbers took a big hit when he joined up with LeBron James in Miami. The other is likely to see some of the same effect having forced a trade to join LeBron in his return to Cleveland. It’s only natural the two will be linked by their proximity to James’ gravitational pull. It’s a very narrow call between them, but the guy who’s I think is likely to demonstrate his continued ability to shoulder a heavy burden gets the slight nod here.
8. Kevin Love – Over the long summer of Kevin Love On The Trading Block, his value got debated endlessly. Was he a guy putting up empty stats on a bad team or a truly great player saddled with some of the worst supporting casts in modern NBA history? How much does either interpretation matter, now that he joins the presumptive Eastern Conference favorite alongside James? Isn’t the better question “how will he fit in with the Cavs?” (The answer is ‘quite well’ even though his numbers might drop just a bit as he won’t be carrying the silly level of offense or expectation he was forced to in Minny.) Focusing just on his offensive production also ignores the downside of his mediocre-at-best defense. Unlike Steph Curry (see below), who can get away with being a bad defensive point guard, having a minus at power forward (which turns into a disaster when played at center) is harder to make up for.
7. Chris Bosh – Bosh is going to see a sharp spike in production as the new top dog in Miami. He’s going to see more shots, he’s going to rebound at a much higher rate. There are going to be approximately 2,937 pieces written about how everyone forgot Chris Bosh was a legitimate superstar. And he’ll do all those while playing VASTLY superior defense to Love. If Miami outperforms expectations, he’s even going to get some “borderline MVP candidate” buzz. It may be obvious, but I’m predicting an enormous year for Bosh.
The Big Guys
Though perhaps not quite as dominant as they once were due to rule changes and the increased reliance on the three-pointer, an elite big man is still an excellent foundation for any team. These next two guys are just those foundational players.
6. Dwight Howard – Houston in blessed with two superstars and cursed that they happen to be two of the hardest players to enjoy watching in the league. Questions of Howard’s attitude and commitment have never really gone away, which makes his absurd level of production all the more shocking. Seemingly recovered from the back problems which haunted the end of his time in Orlando and his one year in Laker-land, Howard is one of the preeminent defensive forces in the league and still an explosively powerful interior scorer. If Houston were to utilize his talents a bit more effectively by not posting him up as much (where he turns the ball over a ghastly 20% of the time, per MySynergySports) and instead used him as a bruising screener and unstoppable finisher in the pick-and-roll, the Rockets would be far better off.
5. Tim Duncan – Sure he sits out some regular season games with minor injuries and even the occasional, cheeky, notation of “DNP-old” He doesn’t play the regular season minutes he did in his mid 20s, but even at 38, Duncan has put up more or less the same line on a per-minute basis, year after year. And the regular season rest is calculated: every season he is able to up his minute load significantly in the playoffs. Had the Spurs not blown so many opponents out on the road to the title, he might have matched the 35 minutes per game he played in the Spurs ultimately disappointing 2012-13 run. Still a dominant scorer and masterful defender, Duncan’s resume also includes the fact that by general acclaim he is one of the best teammates of all time. He may not be around for much longer, but this is an inner-inner circle Hall of Famer still very near his peak.
Going Down, Going Up?
The next two players are probably headed in opposite directions. One has been bobbing just around the edges of the “best player in the game” debate for the last few seasons, but age and a succession of leg injuries are slowing him just enough that he’s dropping back. The other was anointed the Next Big Thing when he was drafted first overall in 2012, and if anything has exceeded expectations.
4. Chris Paul – Still the toughest little SOB in the game. Even as the aforementioned injuries and mileage have sapped his athleticism, he can still dominate through sheer force of will. Paul enters 2014-15 with a lot to prove as he’s never really had sustained playoff success and in many ways the Clippers elimination at the hands of the Thunder stemmed from some uncharacteristic late-game blunders by Paul. He also knows the clock is ticking on his status as an elite player, and he’s just prideful enough to need his first title to be as the best player on the team. In terms of production, Paul gets his own shots, involves more limited teammates and does it while turning the ball over far less frequently than other point guards with comparable responsibilities. Alongside Conley, he’s also one of the more able defenders at the position, using his strength and anticipation to lead the NBA in steals per game four seasons running and six of the last seven.
3. Anthony Davis – The Brow is coming to destroy the world. Seemingly every game sees him figure out how to use his otherworldly combination of length, athleticism and coordination to better effect. With the addition of Omer Asik to help protect rim for the Pelicans, Davis might be fully free to envelope ball-handlers all over the court. On offense, he continues to add shooting range and is just starting to become comfortable making moves that require more than one or two dribbles. This is the truly terrifying bit: he’s already this good and is still getting much better. A question lingering over the NBA is whether Kevin Durant will ever be the best player in the league or if by the time LeBron James is ready to cede the perch, Davis may have passed them both. That probably doesn’t happen this season. Probably.
The Best
The top two players on just about everyone’s list are are the same. But at #1 is it last year’s MVP, or the guy who won the previous four and made the NBA Finals every season of the four he spent in Miami? Both players shatter the “usage-efficiency” curve, scoring at unprecedented rates for players carrying that level of burden for creating offense. Still, there can be only one.
2. Kevin Durant – Fully deserved the MVP award for regular season play. Without Russell Westbrook for a large chunk of the season, Durant pillaged the league for months at a time in a way the Vikings (the ones in longships, not purple) would find impressive. Deadly from anywhere on the floor. Almost impossible to guard due to his combination of height and shooting ability. However, as has been the case on more than one occasion in his career, the playoffs can be a bit rougher on him. His slight build combined with the greater physical leeway allowed defenders means his catches become just a little further from the basket and his shots just a little bit tougher. In the calculus of which one player is most helpful in winning a title, those small edges matter, and still consign Durant to the second slot on this list.
1. LeBron James – Durant may well repeat as MVP this coming season. If James and the Cavs (sensibly) decide to pace him during the regular season to maintain his energy levels for the playoffs, LeBron’s numbers over 82 games might not hold at. Certainly, at 29 (30 on December 30), the freakishness of his athleticism is starting to dim, if only slightly. But James has counteracted this by adding bits and pieces to his arsenal. One year it’s a post-up game. Though it was under-utilized in Miami last year, he’s become one of the most effective catch-and-shoot players in the NBA. This summer, he’s made a well-publicized decision to slim down in order to prolong his career. The added quickness this allows, along with a smaller role on offense and lighter minute load might help him regain his status as one of the top five wing defenders in the game, and area he slipped visibly in 2013-14. Even with that slight dip and Durant’s continued improvement, LeBron still sits atop the list of players you’d take to win you a title tomorrow.